One is not used to describing deals involving the Murdochs in these terms, but there is something bordering on the elegant about the proposed Sky News solution to the plurality problem raised by News Corporation's plan to buy the 61% of BSkyB it doesn't already own.

For a start there are the widespread – if hotly disputed – concerns about the increased concentration of media ownership and undue proprietorial influence extending across from News International's newspapers to Sky News were they all to come under 100% common ownership. So by rolling forward the existing BSkyB shareholding (39% News Corp; 61% others) into the proposed new Sky News company and adding a number of new safeguards – independence built into the articles of association, independent non-exec chair of majority independent board, a corporate governance committee with other well-qualified outsiders, to name but some – that problem would, on the face of it, appear to be solved.

In reality, if it were to happen – and that depends on the whole deal happening at all, which in turn depends on News Corp and then other shareholders being able to agree a price – Sky News would be more obviously and enforceably independent than it is now and some considerable way from the "whitewash" it is being described as by some opponents of the deal.

Then there is the much less discussed question of what would have become of Sky News had it been separated completely – as some schemes would have had it – from the rest of BSkyB. Sky News is as good as it is because it has been loved, cherished and invested in by its owners. The risk with separation (as has been seen previously with ITN and its original owners, the ITV companies) – funding guarantees notwithstanding – is that it becomes a bastard child about whose fate nobody, least of all BSkyB, cares. In no time at all, the service deteriorates and the public interest is the loser. By maintaining a 39% News Corp shareholding in the new Sky News company, there is a chance at least that BSkyB (by then 100% News Corp owned) will continue to care about its news channel.

Then there is the question of what might have happened had Jeremy Hunt in fact decided to refer the deal to the Competition Commission. Why is that significant? Because there was every chance that had the CC actually got to look at it – with their customary econometric obsession with numbers and focus on business efficiency – they might have concluded that the deal should be allowed through with no or minimal conditions. That at least was the view of consultant and CC member until 2008 Chris Goodall. In other words, the Competition Commission referral campaigners against the deal were so keen on what might have produced, in their own terms, paradoxically the "wrong" result.

So there you have it. A deal with force of law (company law at least) that makes Sky News more independent than it currently is, but in which News Corp maintains a significant stake, none of which might have happened had the Competition Commission got involved. What's more, the deal only involves News Corp and BSkyB's other shareholders – who, assuming a price is agreed for the whole deal, will get cash for their stake and shares to the value of 61% of the new Sky News company. So the deal and the "structural" change in the ownership of Sky News demanded by regulators to underpin independence and avoid undue concentration of ownership can all happen in one go.

As I say, elegant. Oh and of course Rupert Murdoch gets what he wants – again.